Occasionally, companies engage in long-term corruption that violates laws and regulations. This paper examines and analyzes the ethical, rational, and social perspectives of normalizing deviant behaviors, using an automobile company’s fuel economy fraud as a case study. The factors that lend legitimacy to organizational behaviors that violate laws and regulations are highlighted. Our analysis results reveal that corruption within an organization is inherited as a social act and becomes the norm.

Previous studies have identified the importance of top management’s role in organizational ambidexterity. The influence of the proactive role of middle management, on the other hand, has not been thoroughly examined. This research aims to clarify the proactive role of middle management in promoting organizational ambidexterity and its effects. The results of the interviews and questionnaire surveys indicate that middle management is required to shape the vision, fostering a corporate culture that encourages proactive corporate partnership activities and promoting organizational ambidexterity.

Cross-sector collaborations are becoming common among academics and practitioners and are deemed particularly essential to successful nonprofit organizations (NPOs). Previous studies have focused on the key drivers of collaboration and emphasized partnerships with cooperative actors. However, two significant gaps remain. Firstly, how do various actors and their agencies emerge through collaboration? These various actors include not only major players, such as NPOs or companies, but also those perceived as unrelated because the literature has mainly highlighted dominant actors, whose presence is frequently assumed without question. Secondly, how can NPOs enroll hostile and noncooperative actors in collaborations? Although forming alliances with cooperative actors compared with noncooperative ones is more manageable, making collaborative efforts with the latter is occasionally necessary. This study discusses the applicability of the actor-network theory (ANT) to overcome the limitations of previous studies. We illustrate a case of collaboration led by an NPO and examine the applicability of ANT. As a result, the study demonstrates how NPOs engage diverse actors to achieve their goals; it also implies that NPOs should consider collaboration a fluid process and build relationships with varied actors.

The purpose of this study is to understand how the human resource input between internal R&D and inter-organizational R&D collaboration affects firms’ knowledge creation. An analysis of patent application data from eight Japanese chemical firms revealed that the human resource input in inter-organizational collaboration positively impacts the number of patent applications from the collaboration. However, no definitive correlation is identified between the resource input in the collaboration and the overall number of the firms’ patent applications. Therefore, it is required for management to ensure that the outcomes of collaborations are effectively diffused and integrated within internal R&D.

This study examines how cognitions of digital transformation in society changed through the COVID-19 pandemic. Firstly, we organized cognitions into three contexts based on technology, organization, and environment framework. Secondly, we conducted a quantitative analysis using newspaper article data. The results suggest that the legitimacy of digital transformation may have increased as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

This paper elucidated the development and diffusion process of a new medical innovation, particle irradiation therapy technology, by using the theoretical perspective of the social shaping of technology (SST). Previous research had theoretical issues that were biased toward analyzing phenomena in which multiple technological seeds are aggregated into a single one. However, although the two competing particle irradiation technologies target the same diseases, both technologies have been widely used in medical field. The analysis revealed a process that that has achieved segregation by taking advantage of its unique strengths.

Corporations initiate Standard-Setting Organizations (SSOs) and formulate technology standards across diverse sectors. Existing research has yielded contradictory conclusions between SSOs and firm innovation, engendering a complexity for both practitioners and academic researchers in thoroughly understanding this domain. This study investigates the influence of SSOs on solid innovation and moderating factors, such as network size, membership policy, and firm size. The dataset was collected from 339 firms of the HDMI Forum, coupled with 679,736 patents filed between 1998 and 2020. The findings imply that the participation impact in SSOs is contingent on such factors as network size, contributor membership policy, and firm size. The network effect manifests positively within an optimal network size in closed membership, turning to a negative influence when the network size expands excessively. Also, adopting an open membership policy significantly enhances the participation impact on member firm innovation; conversely, it declines the innovation activities of founder firms. The results clarify that the firm capacity is significant in an open membership setting. Additionally, the study suggests that founders and participants of SSOs ought to consider the dynamic complications of network size, membership policy, and firm size on firm innovation activity.

The use of external R&D resources for innovation has received substantial attention in the innovation literature. What is less known about it, however, is its impact on the mobility of R&D workers. In this paper, we hypothesized that the external sourcing of R&D resources facilitates the mobility of R&D workers since it provides them with generalpurpose knowledge, generates unutilized technology, and creates job opportunities. These arguments were tested by a panel sample of 2,154 Japanese listed companies between 2012 and 2020. The results indicate that the use of external R&D resources itself positively affects the mobility of R&D workers. However, the amount of investment in external sourcing has a negative impact on their mobility. Furthermore, the more diverse the external sources are, the more R&D workers move. Thus, this study sheds light on an essential aspect of intricate mechanisms through which the external sourcing of R&D resources influences firm-level outcomes.